Suggest a 24 volt battery charger for flooded batteries as back up to solar

[Jweslock]

Hi Everyone,

I want to move to a 24 volt battery bank setup from 12 volt. One of the things i have to now consider is a battery charger that will 3 stage and equalize the battery bank of 8- rolls S 550's 6 volts connected in 24 volt in series /parallel.  I am off grid and use of a a honda generator (2000 inverter) as my source of A/C. I read somewhere I should have a charger capable of at least 10% of ah S550's at 20 ah rate, which is 428ah. This means a charger of 40 amps.

Can I get thoughts of the forum on what I need to augment my solar panels over low sun days and keep my batteries topped up with a generator by suggesting a 24 volt charger and it's application. Do I really need 40amp?

Thanks,
Jim

[boB]

Since you will need a new 24 volt inverter, make sure it is an inverter/charger.

They'll usually have a higher than 40 amp DC charger built in that can run from your
generator.  I would use a power factor corrected charger since your generator is
not very big, power wise.

The Magnum Energy 24V inverter and I think the Schneider inverter/chargers
are PFC so might work well.

boB

[vtmaps]

The Magnum Energy 24V inverter and I think the Schneider inverter/chargers
are PFC so might work well.

The Outback inverter chargers are not PFC, but 'Crewzer' tested them (on the NAWS forum) and found that they had a very good PF as long as they were fed a clean sine wave. 

I find (using a honda eu2000 inverter generator) that there are no PF issues with my Outback inverter charger.

--vtMaps